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With 8 Giga Presses, Tesla Giga Berlin’s 500k annual estimate looks conservative
Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin facility is widely believed to be capable of producing 500,000 vehicles per year in its first phase, which is expected to start operations later this year. Considering that there are eight Giga Presses that are getting set up in the Phase 1 area, however, it would seem that Tesla may be underpromising with regards to Giga Berlin’s potential annual output.
Produced by IDRA, the Giga Press is a house-sized machine capable of producing the megacasts necessary to build the Model Y’s front and rear underbody. The machines themselves are daunting, with each Giga Press taking up to 24 flatbed trucks to transport its components. As per the Giga Press’ specifications, each machine has a cycle time of ~80-90 seconds, allowing an output rate of 40-45 completed castings per hour. This translates to about ~1,000 castings per day, for each Giga Press.
If one were to assume that Tesla uses three megacasts per Model Y and a 20% downtime for each Giga Press, the Germany-based plant may very well be on track to produce significantly more than the 500,000 vehicles that the EV maker has declared in its filings. Rough estimates from the Tesla community have mentioned numbers beyond 1 million vehicles annually from Giga Berlin’s Phase 1 alone. While optimistic, this figure does not seem implausible considering that there will be eight Giga Presses deployed on the site.
Tesla currently has two Giga Press machines in the Fremont Factory that are producing the rear megacast for the Model Y’s underbody. Drone flyovers in the area suggest that Tesla’s Fremont-based Giga Presses have a cycle time of about 170 seconds per casting, likely due to the machines not being fully optimized yet. Considering that IDRA estimates each Giga Press to have a cycle time of ~80-90 seconds, Tesla’s Fremont machines still have a lot of space to optimize their operations.
Interestingly enough, a report from Germany last July hinted that Tesla is actually planning on producing 2 million vehicles per year in the Giga Berlin complex, allowing the EV maker to command about 16% of the expected electric car market share in Europe. If Phase 1 alone could produce more than 500,000 vehicles per year with its eight Giga Presses, a 2-million annual output for the entire Germany-based Tesla plant may very well be realistic.
This is especially notable considering that Tesla will not only be building the Model Y in Giga Berlin. While the company will launch the site with the production of the all-electric crossover, Tesla has also hinted at the Model 3 sedan being manufactured at the Germany-based facility. Elon Musk has noted that Tesla intends to produce a yet-to-be-announced vehicle on the site as well, and it would be one specifically tailored for the European market. Each of these vehicles—the Model Y, the Model 3, and a potential compact car—will likely drive a lot of demand for Tesla’s vehicles, requiring Giga Berlin to produce far more vehicles annually than initially expected.
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Elon Musk
Tesla’s Elon Musk: 10 billion miles needed for safe Unsupervised FSD
As per the CEO, roughly 10 billion miles of training data are required due to reality’s “super long tail of complexity.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has provided an updated estimate for the training data needed to achieve truly safe unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD).
As per the CEO, roughly 10 billion miles of training data are required due to reality’s “super long tail of complexity.”
10 billion miles of training data
Musk comment came as a reply to Apple and Rivian alum Paul Beisel, who posted an analysis on X about the gap between tech demonstrations and real-world products. In his post, Beisel highlighted Tesla’s data-driven lead in autonomy, and he also argued that it would not be easy for rivals to become a legitimate competitor to FSD quickly.
“The notion that someone can ‘catch up’ to this problem primarily through simulation and limited on-road exposure strikes me as deeply naive. This is not a demo problem. It is a scale, data, and iteration problem— and Tesla is already far, far down that road while others are just getting started,” Beisel wrote.
Musk responded to Beisel’s post, stating that “Roughly 10 billion miles of training data is needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving. Reality has a super long tail of complexity.” This is quite interesting considering that in his Master Plan Part Deux, Elon Musk estimated that worldwide regulatory approval for autonomous driving would require around 6 billion miles.
FSD’s total training miles
As 2025 came to a close, Tesla community members observed that FSD was already nearing 7 billion miles driven, with over 2.5 billion miles being from inner city roads. The 7-billion-mile mark was passed just a few days later. This suggests that Tesla is likely the company today with the most training data for its autonomous driving program.
The difficulties of achieving autonomy were referenced by Elon Musk recently, when he commented on Nvidia’s Alpamayo program. As per Musk, “they will find that it’s easy to get to 99% and then super hard to solve the long tail of the distribution.” These sentiments were echoed by Tesla VP for AI software Ashok Elluswamy, who also noted on X that “the long tail is sooo long, that most people can’t grasp it.”
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Tesla earns top honors at MotorTrend’s SDV Innovator Awards
MotorTrend’s SDV Awards were presented during CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
Tesla emerged as one of the most recognized automakers at MotorTrend’s 2026 Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) Innovator Awards.
As could be seen in a press release from the publication, two key Tesla employees were honored for their work on AI, autonomy, and vehicle software. MotorTrend’s SDV Awards were presented during CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
Tesla leaders and engineers recognized
The fourth annual SDV Innovator Awards celebrate pioneers and experts who are pushing the automotive industry deeper into software-driven development. Among the most notable honorees for this year was Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Vice President of AI Software, who received a Pioneer Award for his role in advancing artificial intelligence and autonomy across the company’s vehicle lineup.
Tesla also secured recognition in the Expert category, with Lawson Fulton, a staff Autopilot machine learning engineer, honored for his contributions to Tesla’s driver-assistance and autonomous systems.
Tesla’s software-first strategy
While automakers like General Motors, Ford, and Rivian also received recognition, Tesla’s multiple awards stood out given the company’s outsized role in popularizing software-defined vehicles over the past decade. From frequent OTA updates to its data-driven approach to autonomy, Tesla has consistently treated vehicles as evolving software platforms rather than static products.
This has made Tesla’s vehicles very unique in their respective sectors, as they are arguably the only cars that objectively get better over time. This is especially true for vehicles that are loaded with the company’s Full Self-Driving system, which are getting progressively more intelligent and autonomous over time. The majority of Tesla’s updates to its vehicles are free as well, which is very much appreciated by customers worldwide.
Elon Musk
Judge clears path for Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit to go before a jury
The decision maintains Musk’s claims that OpenAI’s shift toward a for-profit structure violated early assurances made to him as a co-founder.
A U.S. judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding nonprofit mission can proceed to a jury trial.
The decision maintains Musk’s claims that OpenAI’s shift toward a for-profit structure violated early assurances made to him as a co-founder. These claims are directly opposed by OpenAI.
Judge says disputed facts warrant a trial
At a hearing in Oakland, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that there was “plenty of evidence” suggesting that OpenAI leaders had promised that the organization’s original nonprofit structure would be maintained. She ruled that those disputed facts should be evaluated by a jury at a trial in March rather than decided by the court at this stage, as noted in a Reuters report.
Musk helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 but left the organization in 2018. In his lawsuit, he argued that he contributed roughly $38 million, or about 60% of OpenAI’s early funding, based on assurances that the company would remain a nonprofit dedicated to the public benefit. He is seeking unspecified monetary damages tied to what he describes as “ill-gotten gains.”
OpenAI, however, has repeatedly rejected Musk’s allegations. The company has stated that Musk’s claims were baseless and part of a pattern of harassment.
Rivalries and Microsoft ties
The case unfolds against the backdrop of intensifying competition in generative artificial intelligence. Musk now runs xAI, whose Grok chatbot competes directly with OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT. OpenAI has argued that Musk is a frustrated commercial rival who is simply attempting to slow down a market leader.
The lawsuit also names Microsoft as a defendant, citing its multibillion-dollar partnerships with OpenAI. Microsoft has urged the court to dismiss the claims against it, arguing there is no evidence it aided or abetted any alleged misconduct. Lawyers for OpenAI have also pushed for the case to be thrown out, claiming that Musk failed to show sufficient factual basis for claims such as fraud and breach of contract.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers, however, declined to end the case at this stage, noting that a jury would also need to consider whether Musk filed the lawsuit within the applicable statute of limitations. Still, the dispute between Elon Musk and OpenAI is now headed for a high-profile jury trial in the coming months.
Tesla’s Elon Musk: 10 billion miles needed for safe Unsupervised FSD
Tesla earns top honors at MotorTrend’s SDV Innovator Awards
